Abraham Lincoln's election led to secession and secession to war. When the Union soldiers entered the South, thousands of African-Americans fled from their owners to Union camps. The Union officers did not know how to manage this addition to their numbers. Some sought to return the slaves to their owners, but others kept the blacks within their lines and dubbed them "contraband of war." Many "contrabands" greatly aided the war effort.

After Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, which was effective Jan. 1, 1863, black soldiers were officially allowed to participate in the war. Over 180,000 African-Americans eventually served in the Union Army during the Civil War. Of these, more than 33,000 died. The Library of Congress holds histories and pictures of most of the regiments of the United States Colored Troops as well as manuscripts and published accounts by African-American soldiers and their white officers.

WWI

A soldier who lost his leg in World War I shakes hands with the crowd at the Parade of the 369th Colored Infantry.

Many African-Americans served in segregated units during World War I, mostly as support troops. Several units saw action alongside French soldiers fighting against the Germans, and 171 African-Americans were awarded the French Legion of Honor. After the United States entered the war in April 1917, over 400,000 African Americans served, more than double the number that served in the Civil War. Active combat units included the 369th Infantry Regiment, a National Guard outfit also known as Harlem Hellfighters. They were the first Americans, black or white, to reach the combat zone in France, the first to cross the Rhine River in the offensive against Germany; and in continuous combat for 191 days, longer than any other American Unit.

WWII

Dorie Miller, a naval messman on board the Arizona, shot down four planes and was awarded the Navy Cross for his bravery and alertness.

At first, the Army and Navy were reluctant to accept black enlistees or draftees, even on a segregated basis. In 1940, there were fewer than 5,000 blacks and only two black officers in an Army of 230,000 -- that is, a little more than 2 percent. By September 1944, however, there were 702,000 in the Army, 165,000 in the Navy, 17,000 in the Marines, and 5,000 in the Coast Guard. Combined, around 1 million black men and women served in the U.S. armed forces during the war, half of them overseas. However, they were segregated into all-black units, usually under white officers, or were assigned to be cooks, porters, laborers, or servants. They also faced racial harassment by white military police. It was not until 1948 that the armed forces were officially desegregated.

Remembering their experiences in World War I, African-American soldiers and civilians were increasingly unwilling to quietly accept a segregated Army or the discriminatory conditions they had previously endured. Northern black troops sent to the South for training often had violent encounters with white citizens there. Black-owned newspapers protested segregation, mistreatment, and discrimination. Labor leader A. Philip Randolph threatened a march on Washington by hundreds of thousands of blacks in 1941 to protest job discrimination in defense industries and the military. To avoid this protest, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, reaffirming the "policy of full participation in the defense program by all persons, regardless of race, creed, color, or national origin."

During the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, Dorie Miller, a naval messman on board the USS Arizona, pulled his dying captain off the deck and then manned a machine gun. Miller shot down four planes and was awarded the Navy Cross for his bravery and alertness. Although barely out of his teens, he died in a subsequent encounter. His valor was particularly significant because, in spite of numerous protests by African-Americans, the Navy generally only allowed blacks to serve in its Messmen's Branch.

Even though an extreme shortage of nurses in World War II forced the federal government to seriously consider drafting white nurses, defense officials remained reluctant to recruit black nurses throughout the war. Allowing black nurses to care for whites was considered a violation of social norms. Nevertheless, the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses, led by Mabel Staupers, and rights groups like the NAACP, loudly protested racial policies in the Army Nurse Corps and the military in general. These groups achieved some success.

Tuskegee Airmen

Col. Benjamin O. Davis,Jr., the son of the first African American general, pictured on the left, and first Lieutenant Lee Rayford.

Due to the rigid pattern of racial segregation that prevailed in the United States during World War II, over 966 black military aviators were trained at an isolated complex near the town of Tuskegee, Ala., and at Tuskegee Institute, now known as Tuskegee University. Some 450 black fighter pilots under the command of Col. Benjamin O. Davis Jr., (who was to later become the U. S. Air Force's first black general) fought in the aerial war over North Africa, Sicily and Europe. These gallant men flew 15,553 sorties and completed 1,578 missions with the 12th Tactical U. S. Army Air Force and the 15th Strategic U. S. Army Air Force.

End of Segregation

George E.C. Hayes, Thurgood Marshall, and James Nabrit, congratulating each other, following Supreme Court decision declaring segregation unconstitutional, 1954.

In 1948, President Truman abolished racial segregation in the armed services by executive order. Starting with the Korean War, in 1950, integration proceeded rapidly, first at training bases in the United States, then in combat units in Korea, and finally at U.S. military installations around the world. Racial integration in the Army was accomplished with striking speed (the process took only five years) and thoroughness, at least on a formal level. By the mid-1950s a snapshot of a hundred enlisted men on parade would have shown, say, twelve black faces; integration was a fact of life. At a time when blacks were still arguing for their educational rights before the Supreme Court and marching for their social and political rights in the Deep South, the Army accomplished integration with little outcry.

Vietnam

Black U.S. Marine artillerymen greet each other in passing with the clenched fist symbolizing black power at the large base at Con Thien, south of the DMZ, in Vietnam, in Dec. 1968 during the Vietnam War.

The increasing activism of the civil rights movement, coupled with the widening of the Vietnam War, led to turbulent change. Truman's executive order to integrate the military had brought blacks partway into the armed service mainstream; the upheavals of the mid- and late 1960s provided the impetus for some measure of real equality.

African-Americans often did supply a disproportionate number of combat troops, a high percentage of whom had voluntarily enlisted. Although they made up less than 10 percent of American men in arms and about 13 percent of the U.S. population between 1961 and 1966, they accounted for almost 20 percent of all combat-related deaths in Vietnam during that period. In 1965 alone, African-Americans represented almost one-fourth of the Army soldiers killed in action.

In 1968, African-Americans, who made up roughly 12 percent of Army and Marine total strengths, frequently contributed half the men in front-line combat units, especially in rifle squads and fire teams. Under heavy criticism, Army and Marine commanders worked to lessen black casualties after 1966, and by the end of the conflict, African-American combat deaths amounted to approximately 12 percent — more in line with national population figures. Final statistics: Overall, blacks suffered 12.5% of the deaths in Vietnam at a time when the percentage of blacks of military age was 13.5% of the total population.

While many black leaders, most notably Martin Luther King Jr., denounced the war, the antiwar movement was led mainly by whites. The war saw the widespread drafting of blacks into the military, whereas wealthier whites often evaded the draft through college deferments. But on a positive note, increased numbers of black officers served in Vietnam.

By the end of the draft in 1973, blacks made up about 17 percent of the enlisted force. By the early 1980s, the proportion had nearly doubled.

U.S. soldier in Kuwait, 1990

In the first Gulf War, about 25 percent of the American military was black. At the top was Gen. Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the first black man to be the U.S. military’s top commander.

March 23, 2003 - Army Spc. Shoshana Johnson’s became the first African American woman captured and held as a prisoner of war when she was captured in Iraq. The U.S. Army's 507th Maintenance Company was ambushed in the southern Iraqi town of Nassiriya. Eleven American soldiers where killed, six others, including Johnson, were captured. Johnson was shot in both legs. Johnson and the others were freed on April, 13, when other U.S. forces found them near Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit.